Mamlambo is a deity in
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
n and
Zulu mythology
Zulu may refer to:
Zulu people
* Zulu Kingdom or Zulu Empire, a former monarchy in what is now South Africa
* Zulu language, a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa
* Zulu people, an ethnic group of southern Africa
Arts, entertainment, and me ...
, the "goddess of rivers", described as a large snake-like creature.
In 1997, South African newspapers (including
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...
's ''
The Star'' and
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
's ''
Cape Argus
The ''Cape Argus'' is a daily newspaper co-founded in 1857 by Saul Solomon and published by Sekunjalo in Cape Town, South Africa. It is commonly referred to as ''The Argus''.
Although not the first English-language newspaper in South Afric ...
'') reported on sightings of a "giant reptile" monster in the
Mzintlava River near
Mount Ayliff
Mount Ayliff, officially eMaxesibeni, is a small town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, near that province's border with KwaZulu-Natal. In the census of 2011, its population was recorded as being 5,367 people, of whom 98% described th ...
in South Africa. Villagers in the area claimed that the creature was 20 meters (67 feet) long, had the head of a horse, the lower body of a fish, short legs, and the neck of a snake, and that it shined with a green light at night. During the period between January and April 1997, as many as nine deaths had been attributed to the Mamlambo.
According to police, the victims had been in the water a while and had the soft parts of their heads and neck eaten by crabs; local villagers, on the other hand, claimed that these mutilations had been caused by the Mamlambo's habit of eating faces and brains. For this reason, the Mamlambo is often referred to as "the Brain Sucker".
As Felicity Wood points out in ''The Extraordinary Khotso'' (2007), "the mamlambo tends to be associated with Western forms of prosperity, like money, so the fact that she is often depicted as a Western
mermaid
In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Mermaids are sometimes ass ...
. She has arisen in part from a sense of disconnection to a traditional, communal way of life, inequalities and imbalances in the social order, and the lure of Western materialism. Like the
Mami Wata, she is a dangerous, seductive figure, offering wealth and power but able to bring about terrifying ruin".
[http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/15.1/16%20Wood.pdf ]
Film and television
* An expedition in search of the mamlambo was done on the SyFy Show ''
Destination Truth
''Destination Truth'' is an American paranormal reality television series that premiered on June 6, 2007, on Syfy. Produced by Mandt Bros. Productions and Ping Pong Productions, the program follows paranormal researcher Josh Gates around the wor ...
''; the mission found no evidence of the creature's existence.
* The
Cartoon Network animated series
Secret Saturdays
''The Secret Saturdays'' is an American animated television series created by Canadian cartoonist Jay Stephens for Cartoon Network. It debuted on October 3, 2008 in the United States. The series follows the adventures of the Saturdays, a family of ...
features a cryptid inspired by the Mamlambo in an episode.
See also
*
Hippocampus (mythology)
The hippocampus or hippocamp, also ''hippokampos'' (plural: hippocampi or hippocamps; grc, ἱππόκαμπος, from , "horse" and , "sea monster"
*
List of hybrid creatures in mythology
The following is a list of hybrid entities from the folklore record grouped morphologically. Hybrids not found in classical mythology but developed in the context of modern popular culture are listed in a separate section. For actual hybridizati ...
Notes
{{reflist
South African culture
Zulu legendary creatures
Zulu goddesses
Snake goddesses
Mythological hybrids